Film Review: Shutter Island (15) *** (with trailer)

THREE years ago, a triumphant Martin Scorsese was proudly holding aloft his first Oscar – after shooting a remake he called The Departed.

THREE years ago, a triumphant Martin Scorsese was proudly holding aloft his first Oscar – after shooting a remake he called The Departed.

That his first feature since should begin with two men heading across the sea towards Shutter Island is kind of apt.

Because, in Oscar terms, he’s completely missed the boat this time.

His new film was first slated for release last autumn, but sending it out to sail now is effectively an admission that it’s not as good as we all might have hoped.

Massachussetts-born author Dennis Lehane has already seen Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River (2003) bag six Oscar nominations and there was another one for Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone (2007), an underrated treat which was sadly overshadowed by the real life disappearance of Madeleine McCane.

In contrast, Shutter Island feels overblown.

From the minute that US Marshals Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) set foot on what should be terra firma the whole premise feels like it’s on dodgy ground despite Scorsese’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the genre and an admirable intent to apply it with forensic detail.

The two men are investigating the disappearance of murderess Rachel Solando from a remote island asylum off the Boston coast.

Will Dr Cawley (Ben Kingsley) be able to shed any light inside the island’s hospital for the criminally insane when he simply says: “It’s as if she evaporated through the walls?”

And what’s Dr Naehring (a chilling cameo from Max Von Sydow) up to when he asks: “Going somewhere?”

By this point, the music in Shutter Island has already been cranked up to the nth degree without good reason.

Thankfully it’s never quite as annoying as the screeching on There Will Be Blood, but it will still be something you’ll either love or hate.

The atmosphere it creates is one between Scorsese’s own 1991 remake of Cape Fear (itself an over-the-top version of the superior 1962 original) and Hitchcock digitally reinvented.

There’s no denying the superior work of Scorsese’s regular production designer Dante Ferretti for the most part, but his Ward C seems to belong to a different movie altogether.

It just doesn’t feel real enough to offer a sense of menace.

This is a problem given that both DiCaprio and the under-used Ruffalo (so much better in David Fincher’s 2007 film Zodiac) are having enough trouble trying to make the audience engage some real emotions in the picture.

“All I know is that it’s a mental hospital for the criminally insane,” Ruffalo says to a seasick DiCaprio en route.

“We take only the most dangerous damaged patients, ones no other hospital can manage,” Deputy Warden McPherson (John Carroll Lynch) tells both men upon arrival.